Lost 100,000 yuan in 1 minute, the seller said: a painful lesson!

In the cross-border circle, almost every year there are sellers who encounter cases of 0 yuan purchases, either because of their own setting errors, or because of platform bugs, or because of some unconventional sellers’ surprising operations, etc., but many times in the end the sellers have to bear everything.

0 yuan purchases are frequent, and some sellers lose 100,000 yuan in one minute

"I've been working on Amazon for two years and have seen many cases of 0-yuan purchases, but I never thought that the same thing would happen to me one day," a seller cried on a social platform.

Perhaps many sellers viewed it as a bystander, but suddenly they became the protagonist. The cause of the incident was that the seller wanted to drive traffic to a product outside the site, so he set up an off-site social discount code. An hour or two later, the seller wanted to run a promotion and use advertising on the site, but forgot to check the priority discount code, resulting in the superposition of two discounts.

When I opened the backend at night, I suddenly found that there were many orders. At first, the seller thought that the backend was stuck or that it was a prank, but after checking, he found that it was a discount stacking. Not only did the stacked amount of coupons exceed the sales, but he also had to pay Amazon for delivery. Consulting industry leaders and trying the methods provided by netizens were of no avail, and there was no way to cancel it. He could only swallow his anger and lost 100,000 yuan in vain.

The same mistake happened to another seller. He bought more than 200 orders for 0 yuan, but the key is that he still shipped the goods. He had to make up for the loss himself. In fact, many sellers have made this mistake. One serious company sold out thousands of stocks in seconds, with a daily loss of up to millions. He was also laughed at by the industry as an Amazon philanthropist. However, losing money on shipping is only a relatively good result after a 0 yuan purchase. The worse sellers are those who cancel the order with great difficulty, but the link is useless.

"I once made a mistake and bought more than 2,000 orders for 0 yuan. I cried and opened a case to ask customer service to help cancel these orders," an operator revealed. However, even if the order was cancelled and the loss was reduced, the impact was irreversible. Countless negative reviews came in, and the comments were all about fake shipments and scammers. In the end, the link was also invalid.

As we all know, promotional activities are one of the key ways for cross-border sellers to seize traffic, increase product exposure and achieve conversions. However, in the promotional activities carried out by sellers, coupons and LD/BD flash sales are often superimposed, and promotional discounts are calculated incorrectly, so that the phenomenon of 0 yuan purchase is relatively common, which brings huge losses to sellers.

When setting up codes and coupons, sellers may neglect to check and ignore that the previously set coupons are still valid, and set up new flash sales, which results in buyers being able to use two discounts in combination when purchasing goods. Generally, sellers will not find out at the time, and will not realize something is wrong until the number of orders increases. An operator once caused the store's million-dollar inventory to be basically cleared out due to negligence, and was eventually asked by the company to compensate for huge losses. This is a bloody actual case.

However, some sellers did not set it up by mistake. Some sellers revealed that some unscrupulous sellers would open two accounts to make quick money, one for self-delivery and the other for VC. On the first day of the membership day, they would use the self-delivery account to make 0-yuan purchases, and then use it as cannon fodder to boost rankings. Once their rankings were up, they would start using the VC account to harvest orders.

It is understood that after the seller's outrageous operation, his self-shipping account placed more than 2,800 orders at a price of 0 yuan, but he gradually canceled them later and did not lose too much. However, his VC account made a lot of money.

It is precisely because of the outrageous operations of some sellers and the platform's own rules that Amazon has paid more attention to the issue of zero-yuan purchases. According to sellers, many accounts that mistakenly set the wrong discounts will be warned by Amazon and have their stores blocked because of zero-yuan purchases.

Behind the 0 Yuan purchase: sellers were warned and stores were blocked

When it comes to 0 yuan purchases, sellers avoid it. Even if the 0 yuan purchases are caused by platform bugs, many sellers are worried that Amazon will accuse them of "sales surge and ranking manipulation".

Last year, Amazon experienced a system bug that led to a surge in orders for zero-yuan purchases in multiple categories. That is, multiple Amazon listings unexpectedly experienced a surge in orders without any discounts or flash sales, and a large number of products were cleared from inventory, but the actual payment amount for these orders was zero yuan.

However, compared with platform bugs, the phenomenon of 0-yuan purchases caused by missetting discount stacking is more common. A seller revealed on a social platform that he had 0-yuan purchases due to missetting discount stacking. In a short time, he sold more than 900 orders, and even the FBA inventory was emptied.

I called customer service to cancel the order, but it was no use. One week later, I received a warning from Amazon about search ranking manipulation, and I was left wondering whether to confirm or deny the manipulation.

In comparison, some sellers encountered even worse situations. After a purchase of 0 yuan, the seller's account was suddenly blocked . The email sent by Amazon later showed that the seller tried to manipulate the sales ranking and artificially increase network traffic.

In this regard, an experienced seller gave his advice of experience: "Generally speaking, if the account's sales history is good and there are not many violations, generally only a warning will be given." Amazon should have an internal evaluation system for each account. If the account is a pure white hat and the reviews are relatively stable, the most it will receive is a warning for manipulating traffic. However, if there are violations such as brushing orders, then the possibility of being registered is relatively high.

The sales volume surged in a short period of time, which in turn led to a rapid increase in the BSR ranking. In addition, the account itself had problems, which led to the Amazon system determining that it violated the sales policy and eventually blocked the store. However, some sellers hold different opinions: "As long as the delivery is in accordance with the normal regulations, there will be no fraud complaints. Those blocked stores may not ship or ship less."

Moreover, after this happens, the seller is unlikely to cancel the order or file a complaint. In previous years, when there was a 0-yuan purchase, some sellers could try to open a case to complain and ask customer service to cancel the order, and the probability was relatively high. In recent years, the possibility of cancellation is even smaller, and sellers can only accept it when they encounter it. In order to avoid being identified as fake orders and fraud, some sellers will choose to ship at a loss.

For sellers, in order to avoid the occurrence of zero-yuan purchases, they need to count in advance whether there are any coupon stacking situations, the product prices and profit margins after the discount stacking, etc., and keep records of promotional activities, including the products participating in the promotion, promotion period, price, quantity, etc. Check them every day to discover and solve problems in a timely manner.

Amazon has been conducting strict inspections on possible illegal activities of sellers, so sellers are advised to be cautious.

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